Virginia Garrard-Burnett

Interests

Biography

Virginia Garrard-Burnett is Professor of History and Religious Studies.  She received her Ph.D in History from Tulane University and has been on the faculty at UT-Austin since 1990.  She specializes in the religious history of Latin America with a focus on Protestantism and new religious movements.  The recent publication of a Spanish translation of her book Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem led one newspaper in that country to describe her as a "worldwide authority on the history of Protestantism in Guatemala."  Her most recent book, Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala Under General Efraín Ríos Montt, 1982-1983, examines the rule of the born-again Pentecostal dictator Rios Montt, whose military government perpetrated numerous atrocities.  She has also edited On Earth as it is in Heaven: Religion and Society in Latin America and co-edited, with David Stoll, Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America.  Currently, she and Paul Freston are co-editing the Cambridge History of Religion in Latin America, which is due for publication in 2011.